Untalented TalentCorp

 

TalentCorp was initiated by the government and as part of the government they must be aware that employees in the public sector are dominated by one group of people. It would be quite hypocritical for them to preach about diversity in the workplace when they too practice selective hiring. 

Fairuz Ahmad

In early 2011, the Malaysian government took a bold step by setting up TalentCorp, an agency designed to streamline the performance of the Malaysian labour market. 

One of the primary goals of Talentcorp is to attract Malaysians working abroad to return home, thereby reversing the outflow of highly skilled Malaysian professionals to foreign countries—a phenomenon proverbially known as ‘brain drain’.  

As a Malaysian working in the Middle East for many years, I am one of the candidates with whom Talentcorp actively seeks to engage.

I read on the internet about the results achieved by TalentCorp. In its first 12 months of operation, TalentCorp claimed to have attracted 680 professional Malaysians to re-locate to Malaysia. This is a small number considering the estimated 700,000 Malaysians currently residing abroad.

In its second year, TalentCorp managed to encourage 923 highly skilled Malaysians to return home. This year, TalentCorp targets 1000 Malaysians to return to Malaysia. Two years since its inception, it is quite obvious  the performance of TalentCorp has barely improved. 

Recently, members of the Malaysian expatriate community in the Middle East were invited to attend networking events organized by TalentCorp. These events were held in several major Middle Eastern cities–namely Doha, Manama, Muscat, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.  Since they were planning to drop by my city, Doha, I saw my chance to gain further insight into TalentCorp.

I was not sure what to expect from the networking event, but I had a feeling it would be rather grand as the venue chosen was the meeting hall of a luxury hotel. 

The event started with a presentation by Puan Sherene Azura Azli, general manager of TalentCorp (CEO Johan Merican was curiously absent). She spoke rather optimistically about TalentCorp’s ambitions to improve the performance of the Malaysian labour market. Puan Sherene clarified to the packed audience that Malaysia’s goal of becoming a high income nation was impeded by the talent and skills deficit.

Senior representatives from the petroleum and healthcare industries also gave presentations to drive home the point that in order for Malaysian corporations to succeed, individuals with skill and influence are needed to participate in the local job market, especially in the private sector.

Overall I was impressed with the presentations and the professional nature of the event. However, there was no formal discussion about the realities of the Malaysian job market. There was no presentation about the systemic discrimination among employers, the disparity in salaries and the difficulty among fresh local graduates to gain employment.

Puan Sherene alluded to the issue of disparities within the labour market when she gave the statistic that 67% of local university graduates are women, of which only a small fraction make it to managerial positions. She did not further elaborate the point she wanted to make. I could only assume that she wanted to keep to the script, which was to portray Malaysia with optimism rather than negativity.

When the event was opened up to the floor for questions and answers, no one raised any query. Apparently, the audience was keener on the Malaysian style buffet than raising issues about discriminatory hiring practices and wage unfairness. Challenges that face the Malaysian labour market was not a topic that people wanted to discuss openly.

Personal interactions were different. I witnessed one assertive guest approach TalentCorp senior manager, Adele Lim, to highlight the issue of quotas, affirmative action and unfairness in hiring practices. He remarked that foreign expatriates have been critical of Malaysian talent, claiming they lack the skills necessary to succeed in technical roles. He spoke specifically about the oil and gas sector, which he claimed is dominated by engineers from India. Adele denied that there was bias.  She opened the conversation to a HR manager from an oil and gas company to get his feedback. To her dismay, he concurred that there is bias in the Malaysian oil and gas sector that allows certain foreign nationals to dominate various technical sectors. The harsh and competitive nature of globalization has allowed such a phenomenon to exist.

Although I am veteran in my industry, I still remember the difficulties of trying to look for a job in the late 80’s. Even today during a period of stable economic growth, there are many university graduates who find it difficult to find jobs in Malaysia. 

It has been said that Malaysian universities churn out nearly 20,000 engineering graduates a year. But the perception among hiring executives is that they are not sufficiently competent.There could be many reasons why the private sector has been slow to absorb the local graduates, many of whom come from the Malay ethnic community. But the prevailing belief among many experts is that there is an element of bias. 

A study conducted by two Malaysian professors, Dr Lee Hwok Aun and Dr Muhammed Abdul Khalid, discovered that Chinese graduates are far more likely to get call backs for interviews than their Malay counterparts with similar curriculum vitae. TalentCorp, with its lofty goals to help Malaysia’s labour market, should encourage the government to take action on this issue. After all, this is an easy matter to solve– job agencies and HR managers should be encouraged to hide the names of applicants before submitting résumés to prospective interviewers. Accordingly, companies should be asked to create interviews that are standardized, so that the same set of questions are asked to all candidates, regardless of ethnicity, gender, age or other discriminatory criteria.

I am not naive to think that TalentCorp has all the answers. TalentCorp was initiated by the government and as part of the government they must be aware that employees in the public sector are dominated by one group of people. It would be quite hypocritical for them to preach about diversity in the workplace when they too practice selective hiring. I am also sure government workers are fully aware of the wage differences between the private and public sectors.

Another topic TalentCorp  failed to touch upon during the event was the issue of salaries. An economic census conducted in 2011 showed employees in the mining sector were among the highest paid at RM7,772 per month on average, while the average monthly wages in the services  and manufacturing sectors were RM2,126 and RM2,040 respectively. This disparity in salaries drives many people  in less lucrative economic sectors to seek employment outside Malaysia, where salaries are much higher. 

TalentCorp is squandering the opportunity to improve the Malaysian job market. Their goal seems to be about appeasing the private sector while striving to reach an arbitrary key performance indicator (KPI) set by the government. They do not seek to challenge the private or public sectors. This was apparent in the networking event.

TalentCorp should not try to promote their objectives to individuals working in the Middle East or Western countries, but to the Malaysian employers themselves. They have to change the misguided perceptions held by the employers and encourage them to be more proactive in their search for the right talent. It should be TalentCorp’s goal to minimize or eliminate the artificial barriers created by the private sector. The incentives given to foreign nationals with skills should be extended to all eligible Malaysians, with added bonuses, as they are more likely to re-invest their money into the local economy.

Likewise, the public sector should be asked to actively participate in TalentCorp’s future networking events. They should send the message to Malaysians all over the world that they too can contribute to the government . The message should be about social and civic responsibility ahead of financial reward.

If Puan Sherene could wonder why more women are not occupying senior management positions, she should be challenging the employers and not raise this issue as a rhetorical question to a disaffected audience. New ideas need  about how to promote greater participation of women at all levels to be introduced and shared with the public. For example in Norway, a quota system was introduced that requires 40% of corporate board members to be women.  Puan Sherene should ask her employer, the government, if Malaysia needs to introduce similar ideas to promote fairness at the workplace. 

The issue of foreign nationals preventing the rise of local Malaysian talent to senior levels is another matter that needs to be addressed by TalentCorp. They should not deny the existence of such a phenomenon. They should try to tackle it by asking the government to put stricter conditions on visas issued to foreign nationals. They should also seek to have foreign nationals undergo yearly assessments that prove they are contributing to Malaysia’s economic growth and transfer of technology. These assessments should be audited by third party agencies, so that the companies do not try to circumvent the issue.

Most companies hire primarily based on financial considerations. If they cannot gain the productivity from the Malaysian workers, they tend to place the blame squarely on the employees. It is about time those in management positions take the responsibility, and not judge the employees too harshly.  I think in the case of TalentCorp, maybe it is time for their managers to be judged.